Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA), a men’s organisation that sees itself as a movement striving to bring about a more gender-just and egalitarian society, was born more than ten years ago in response to an initiative that came from the media. MAVA believes that men can and should join women’s struggles to create a less violent, more just world, “where men and women can walk together on the path towards humanness”[1]. In this context, the genesis as also the development of this organisation is unique and seems to bear testimony to a modern, urban and socially responsible civil society, of which it is a part. MAVA, together with its Pune based sister organisation, Purush Uvach (Men Speak), inhabits what could be characterised as a gendered political space carved out in response to second-wave feminism by pro-feminist men for the first time in India. As a movement that seeks in the main to end sexist abuse such as domestic violence and rape and to bring about a greater parity of gender relations, it has been critiquing stereotypical role models and other manners of male socialisation as well as interrogating dominant constructs of masculinity[2].

Members of the core group of the organisation as well as its fellow-travellers hail primarily from the urban, educated, middle-classes and broadly articulate a viewpoint that is socially progressive and gender-sensitive. Their pioneering efforts in addressing men as significant players in the struggle specifically against domestic violence and more generally against gender oppression and gender inequality have, we believe, resulted in the strengthening as well as a new empathetic questioning of the Women’s Movements. MAVA’s primary sphere of influence is urban, and it works with the dual strategies that it calls ‘preventive’ and ‘curative’. As a part of the former, it has undertaken diverse and wide-ranging activities from publishing an annual journal, Purush Spandana, to organising self-defence workshops for women; as ‘curative’ work, it conducts special counselling for both men and women in specific cases of domestic violence and abuse.
These factors appear to distinguish it sharply from other progressive political formations as also other men’s groups and organisations active in our milieu. It is their involvement as men in furthering gender equality that distinguishes the constituents of this organisation from women’s groups working for broadly the same ends. Though MAVA has been working very closely with various women’s organisations, it has retained its individual identity as a men’s organisation even as its core group includes very active women members.